The Secret Identity of Beemer, Baron Mustache-Wax

August 13th, 2004

We bought Jerry a laptop this evening with all his extra grant money. Whee! So he stayed home to play with it (and get some downtime) while I went off to celebratory Gin and Coffee. Karen got a job, hooray!

Karen & Thomas, the Floyds (though I got there late, so I only saw them for a few minutes before they had to leave to put sproglings to bed), Bernadette, Kate, and Mike K., back from much work travel. The usual kind of gathering. We tried a game from Pyramid, and it was okay. Movement was random and there weren't a whole lot of choices to make during play because of it. Lots of games make this mistake. I think it's Monopoly's fault. Still, had a good time.

I promised everyone I would post a link: Kingdom of Loathing (an adventurer is you!) is absolutely brilliant. Go play!

Three things that make it completely awesome:

1. The funny. My Turtle Tamer has a Bitchin' Meat Car, and while I can trounce anything in the Orcish Frat House, I can't yet take on monsters in the Obligatory Pirate Cove. I'm working on getting a sabre-toothed lime for a familiar. I love this!

2. The designer built an MMORPG using webpages and stick-figure graphics. This means that all the time and effort goes into making the game more fun, rather than prettier.

3. Limited adventures. You get 40 adventures per day, which means that you can log in and play for about half an hour, and then you're done. It doesn't take over your life, and more turns can be used as a reward in the game. Brilliant!

This is all Death's fault, by the way. He introduced us to it while we were in San Francisco.